Time reporting and billing

HI Wrike

I would like to make a request for an improvement to the time logging side of the software as we are struggling to implement a slick invoicing process for identifying unbilled time from billed time.

At present there is no way identify whether time has been billed or not within Wrike other than entering a comment or note within a task or project. This means there is a real risk of billing time twice, which looks very unprofessional.

It would be a massive help to have a function available for when a time report is run or printed off that gives an option to select/highlight the time as being billed. If this were possible when a book keeper is searching for time to bill they could then filter time and search for unbilled time only.

I would have thought that having this functionality is fundamental to a project management software program and is certainly a function offered by rival companies. 

Please can you give this serious consideration as we don't want to use separate time keeping software such as Harvest and have to integrate it with wrike,we want a one stop shop please!!

Many thanks

Alex

 

 

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Hi Wrike.

Yes, I would also like this feature as Alex suggests, and also I would like to track the time, not only by project, but by different work types within a project and for this to be visible in the reports.

Thank you!

 

Best, Cathrine 

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Stephanie Westbrook

@Catherine Welcome to the forums! We just recently added categories for timelog entries to Wrike Labs. An admin can create different category options and then anyone creating a time entry can specify a category. You can then run Timelog Reports which show category data. Were you looking for something like that?

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Hi Wrike

I note that we now have the ability to put time logs into categories, which is useful. But it would be more useful to have the ability to run a report and/or perhaps produce a dummy invoice that when it has been run marks that time as being billed.

My team logs all its time on each project in wrike and then our accounts team then extract the time to transpose into invoices to our clients. This process is taking us far too long because other than putting a note on the there is no way of knowing what time has or hasn't been billed. Whilst the tracking of projects within Wrike is very good the fundamental purpose of this is to make money and therefore i would have thought having a function as mentioned above would be a priority.

I would like to make a top priority request that you look into this as we dont want to have to use an alternative time logging system.

Many thanks in advance.

Alex

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Stephen

Hi Aex, thanks for coming back here. This post and suggestion have been of value during internal conversations among our Teams. I have no update in regards the exact idea you have suggested above around identifying tasks which have been already reported and billed.

As a workaround, maybe having a checkbox Custom Field, 'Billed' be helpful here? Admittedly, it would be a very manual process i.e. having to open each task and mark the checkbox once billed, but once you're done you can run a Report and exclude tasks with this option checked.

I'll be sure to bring to this post to the attention of the Product Team again post back here with any updates in regards to the suggested solution 👍

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Second this. Major flaw. Billing/Invoicing time is completely missing, and almost impossible to recreate in any other system due to the below - could be solved with better time tracking integration/sync. e.g. Flow (getflow.com) has a 2-way sync with Harvest.
 
Timer is also problematic - yes it works offline, but neither the webpage nor the app do - so this is only useful for continuing a current timer under a temporary disconnection. I can't use it e.g. with a laptop on the road. I spend 25% of my day without reliable internet, for instance.

Being tied to the task, rather than a general timer (like this: harvest, which isn't even that good as a pure timer, or toggl.com for an even better example) makes it hard to ensure "a timer is always running", which we have found is 100% crucial in getting staff to track their time. otherwise time spent out of the system (Wrike) is rarely tracked accurately, and often not tracked at all (they need to remember a) to do it and b) how long it was, with no timer to assist).

Compounding the lack of integration with systems like toggl or harvest and this time-tracking problem gets worse
 
Compared with hundreds of other PM/task systems, now invoicing is a completely manual process. Even reporting on time is manual. There's no way to select all projects in the report view, for instance - this is a problem for the report creation in general as it means ANY update to the list of projects means you need to go and update every report, which most people will forget to do.
 
The time log report also has a bug in not showing entries from the root level anyway.
Have to select projects/folders, the root level isn't available:
but you also can't go on to the next step leaving them all DEselected
 
Time is also exported as a datetime field, not a number e.g. 00:15 not 0.25, meaning calculations in Excel are much harder - likely requiring manual change:
 
Also can't add time on behalf of others, critical for managers fixing up time entries to align with billable expectations: https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/360000374589-Adding-Time-on-behalf-of-others
It appears people are trying to build their own invoicing systems/integrations via API, but even that's hard: https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115003278865-Webhook-question
You can't use Zapier to push this data to another system, as that doesn't allow for edits or time created in the other system (which would be needed for accurate plan vs actual forecasting).
There are no bidirectional services (e.g. PieSync) that support Wrike.
 
Even if you do do it all manually, there's this issue as well: https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/115002803565-Time-reporting-and-billing
 
This leaves a major and common workflow - billing for time - completely manual and error-prone - and far more work with Wrike than almost any other system, unless you completely push time tracking outside of wrike, in which case you lose all the project resourcing/reporting options inside wrike. This should be seen as a glaring, major flaw internally. I can't believe there isn't a solution to this and that this thread isn't being taken more seriously.
 
* Commercial Management is also missing i.e. managing and reporting on commercial outcomes - time and progress vs dollars, dollars over time etc. Harvest does a pretty good job at this.
Even more reason to integrate with Harvest.
 
Images removed, but sent in email to Wrike staff (as they relate to my account)
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That feature is totaly missing!

Many projects are not finished at the end of a month, but the customer expects us to send a montly invoice.
Thus, it must not happen that timetracking entries are made for this month after we have sent the invoice. Otherwise, we would not bill the time.

In general, i would like to identify timetracking entries that are made after an invoice has been sent! That's not possible at the moment.
I would like to have something like this:

1. Add a new status group in workflows named "billed"
2. After i change the status of a project/task to the status of group "billed", all timetracking entries that have been made to the tasks are classified as billed.

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Recommend integrating with Harvest or just copying what Harvest does.  I've had this same problem with other PM software, tracking time becomes useful when is it more robust.  Oflline use and reporting tagging for approval and billing

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Hugh

Hey everyone, apologies for the delay in response here.

Thank you for sharing your feedback, it's been passed on to the Product team. They currently have no plans to add this suggestion to the short-term roadmap. If there are any updates or new information about the status of this suggestion, I'll be sure to let you know.

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Well, that settles my decision on whether or not to go with Wrike or not. As an accountant I need to differentiate Billed vs Unbilled time.

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Same here. We need to know which time logs has been billed. We (an agency) use Teamwork at the moment, which have this billing report. But the planning tool in Wrike, could be a win for us.

But without billed/not billed on time logs. I don’t see it work.

It’s important for us that this information is on each time log (and not on the task). Since a tasks often stretch over two months and therefore potentially are billed partially at the end of each month, based on time used each month.

I don’t know if this could be a potential workaround? To setup categories (“billable”, “not billable” and “billed”) for time logs and then make a report showing all “billable” logs for lasts month. And afterwards update all “billable” logs to “billed”. If this cannot be done in the interface, it might be possible through the API. Any feedback on this idea would be great? 🙏

Best regards,
Casper

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Hi everyone! Have you checked Budgeting in Wrike - new functionality available on Wrike for Professional Services accounts? It includes hourly rates that are used alongside tracked time and task effort to automatically calculate your actual and planned bill amount and labor costs 🙂 Please let me know if you have any questions! 

Lisa Community Team at Wrike Wrike Product Manager Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

Lisa Wrike Team member Become a Wrike expert with Wrike Discover

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Same here. I have also raised it on a different thread. I've been repeatedly requesting for the drop-down on billing type in Timelog to have the ability to be marked as non-billable vs billable on the time entry level. Causing a lot of issues with KPIs because of that.

https://help.wrike.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/6692435954199-Editing-Billing-type-of-Time-Entries

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Juan

Hi Mercina Jobin, thank you for voicing your interest in this suggestion. I've replied to you in the other thread you mention in your comment 👍
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